We meet waitress Frankie (Audra McDonald) and short-order cook Johnny (Michael Shannon) when they are in the midst of a noisy, naked, one-night stand. All goes smoothly until after they've enjoyed themselves. And then comes the question: Is he going to stay? Or leave?

Contrary to how women and men are usually portrayed, she wants him to go. She's prickly and likes her own space — a TV movie and some ice cream are waiting for her. But over and over again, he refuses. In 1987, this may have been romantic. Certainly, Terrence McNally's play was billed then as a romantic comedy. But in this #MeToo era, Johnny's persistance, despite Frankie's flat refusals, slides quickly from creepy to downright menacing. There's nothing romantic about it. When the couple takes a look outside the window and sees a woman being beaten up by a man in an apartment across the street, it feels like foreshadowing. Johnny following Frankie around her West Side apartment, asking to see her private parts, grabbing her to kiss her and declaring what she's willing to give him is not enough, is deeply uncomfortable to watch. 

But it also feels honest. Yes, women do often fend off unwelcome advances by smilingly demurring at first. Yes, they may start fearing for their safety when they're not listened to. When Frankie throws on clothes and digs her keys out of her bag so she can leave her own apartment to get away from him, liberty seems so very close ... and then he manipulates her into staying.

And yet, McDonald and Shannon's performances are so vulnerable, their characterizations so precise, that we immediately understand that their individual peccadillos — Frankie's snappishness, Johnny's intense neediness — stem from not from bad intentions, but from a despairing loneliness. Frankie might not need Johnny, exactly, but she certainly needs something. And there's a moment when they finally find some peace together, dawn breaking over their faces, that feels like, if not love, then at least hope.

"Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," directed by Arin Arbus at the Broadhurst Theatre. Through Aug. 25.